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The purpose of a story is to be an axe that breaks up the ice within us.

Franz Kafka

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Franz Kafka
Age: 41 †
Born: 1883
Born: July 3
Died: 1924
Died: July 3
Aphorist
Claims Adjuster
Diarist
Fabulist
Lawyer
Novelist
Poet Lawyer
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Translator
Writer
Praha
František Kafka
Kafka
Purpose
Stories
Breaks
Ice
Break
Within
Story

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Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away but this opinion was all that he was permitted.
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From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
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You can choose to be free , but it's last decision you'll ever make
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I hate everything that does not relate to literature, conversations bore me (even if they relate to literature), to visit people bores me, the sorrows and joys of my relatives bore me to the very soul. Conversation takes the importance, the seriousness, the truth, out of everything I think.
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The cruelty of death lies in the fact that it brings the real sorrow of the end, but not the end. The greatest cruelty of death: an apparent end causes a real sorrow. Our salvation is death, but not this one.
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You're not cross with me, though? he said. She pulled her hand away and answered, No, no, I'm never cross with anyone.
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Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.
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The various forms of despair at the various stations on the road.
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They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.
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Anyone who renounces the world must love all men, for he renounces their world too. He thus begins to have some inkling of the true nature of man, which cannot but be loved, always assuming that one is its peer.
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The man in ecstasy and the man drowning: both raise their arms.
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Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own castle.
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We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
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Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.
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The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.
Franz Kafka
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. . . The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation-a book should serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us.
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Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence... someone might possibly have escaped from their singing but from their silence, certainly never.
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The limited circle is pure.
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The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy the heavens. There is no doubt of that, but it proves nothing against the heavens, for heaven simply means: the impossibility of crows.
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Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace.
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